Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Iran Commits Act of War

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border. They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures -- certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," said explosives expert Kevin Berry. "So it's the same make and model."

U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and -produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.

"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," said Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."

I think it's just a matter of time until we are forced to deal with Iran.

1 Comments:

"I think it's just a matter of time until we are forced to deal with Iran."

You've said this many times before. It strikes me as an obfuscation, deliberate or not, of what you are really trying to say, which is that we must initiate military action against Iran ASAP.

Think about what bombing Iran gets us:

1. A decrease in attacks against American targets abroad? I doubt it. Possibly in the short term, if we know where the bomb-making factories are and can blow them up. But making car bombs isn't nuclear science, and an aggressive act like us bombing them would certainly trigger a concerted, well-orchestrated, and popular increase in attacks and insurgent support, if not another global jihad.

2. A better environment to bring down the mullahs? Not. If we attack Iran, it will further consolidate their power and militancy.

3. The gratitude and sympathy of the world community? Absolutely not.

Meanwhile the Iranians get: a bunch of dead people to parade in front of int'l news cameras and the attendant sympathy, as well as further pretext to arm against and attack American/Western targets.

If you advocate total war against Iran (invading and occupying the country, changing the regime, installing a new government, etc), the short-term losses incurred as a result of airstrikes would be arguably acceptable. But just bombing them, by any reasonable cost-benefit analysis, would only create more problems.